A Social-Media Decoder

Of the approximately 300 million public comments made online worldwide every day—about two-thirds of them on Twitter—some 10 million, on average, are related to television (though daily numbers vary quite widely). How to make sense of it all?

Bluefin Labs is one of a growing number of analytics companies parsing the meaning of comments in social media. And its CEO, Deb Roy, believes they are capturing a fundamental change in the relationship between creators and consumers of mass media. "What I have learned by hanging out with TV executives, talent agencies, and creative types is that the assumption is built into their organizations' DNA that this is a one-way dialogue," he says. "Audience members speaking through social media is effectively a shift in power."